BXBX NOVEL Chapter 50: 49 Squid Seafood Canned
“Hey, not bad performance there, Crocodile Bro.”
As soon as Chen Xing got home, he heard Chen Lingya looking at him with a smirk.
“You came to watch? Why didn’t you come to find me?” Chen Xing put down his backpack, not particularly surprised; he had also heard some rumors. The escalating story of him and Zheng Weixin reaching outside the school and being picked up by his sister was no surprise.
“There were too many people, I was embarrassed.”
Chen Xing snorted and looked at the empty living room, “Where are mom and dad?”
“They took dad to the hospital for treatment. Mom said there are cold dishes in the fridge, and if you don’t want those, you can cook something else for yourself.”
“I’m going to cook some noodles. You want any?”
“No green onion, less salt, no Sichuan pepper oil, extra chili, and throw in a fried egg.”
“So demanding.” Chen Xing rolled up his sleeves and walked into the kitchen.
He quickly cooked the noodles and brought them to the dining table in the living room, where the steaming noodles exuded a fragrant scent.
After gobbling down the noodles in a few bites, Chen Xing wiped his mouth clean with a paper towel, “You do the dishes, alright?”
Returning to his room, he closed the door and opened the Stone Booklet.
The upper-right corner showed a current balance of 8 Skill Points.
There were four skills available for activation: Primary Vegetarian Pet Food, Primary Polishing Technique, Primary Waxing Technique, and Large Can Pet Meat Freeze-Dried.
Primary Vegetarian Pet Food seemed unnecessary at this stage. Polishing and Waxing, from the descriptions, appeared to buff his own Beast Taming. One increases elemental resistance, and the other makes the Beast Tamer’s body lighter and faster.
Lastly, the description for the Large Can Pet Meat Freeze-Dried indicated it could help pets focus better and cooperate with their master in small games.
After some consideration, Chen Xing decided to activate the Large Can Pet Meat Freeze-Dried skill.
Mainly because in the later parts of the Pet Nutritionist career tree, two domineering skills had emerged: Spicy Dried Fish and Extreme Overlord Volcanic Charred Butter Steak.
He was excited at the prospect of discovering new cost-effective abilities beyond the Large Can Pet Meat Freeze-Dried.
Because, based on his current impression of the three career trees, the Pet Nutritionist offered the best value, solving his problem with startup capital.
Next was the Pet Trainer career, while the Pet Caretaker seemed rather ordinary at first glance.
Activate Large Can Pet Meat Freeze-Dried!
A flood of knowledge appeared in his mind, and Chen Xing closed his eyes to slowly digest it.
A little later, after having fully assimilated the information, it all made sense…
He understood the effect of the Large Can Pet Meat Freeze-Dried.
It could enhance a Beast Tamer’s interest in small games, including but not limited to such games; even in regular training, it could entice pets to show a substantial increase in enthusiasm through its temptation.
This was essentially an irresistible treat for pets.
Since it was so tempting to Beast Tamers… Chen Xing thought of some other uses for the Large Can Meat Freeze-Dried, like quickly improving relations with other Beast Tamers.
However, with the Secret Realm trip the next day, it was better to wait until he got back before buying it; otherwise, the machine would be useless just sitting there.
Because he had to handcraft the freeze-dried food himself, and it wasn’t something that could be done in a few hours. Without supervision, the machine would be unattended.
After activating Large Can Pet Meat Freeze-Dried, a new skill to unlock appeared—Seafood Squid Canned.
[Seafood Squid Canned] You’ve learned to make delicious cans full of rich seafood flavor. Although it has a strong fishy smell, it’s the greatest delight for aquatic Beast Tamers, but non-aquatic Beast Tamers might need to get over the odd smell a bit. Consuming the can quickly restores the Beast Tamer’s stamina. (0/10)
Based on the description, it seems like a skill similar to Spicy Dried Fish.
Spicy Dried Fish restores Magic Power, Seafood Squid Canned restores stamina.
It’s quite a nice ability, as Beast Tamers are not made of iron—they get tired too. When tired, they can eat a can to recover stamina and continue their training with vigor… hiss.
Wouldn’t this be somewhat too capitalistic?
“Awoo, awoo, awoo.”
The Taotie lying by the window wanted to get on the bed, stood up from the ground, and its huge croc head bumped into the side of the bed, staring at its master with innocent little eyes.
Looking at the nearly one-meter-long head, Chen Xing sighed deeply, “It’s not that I won’t let you up on the bed, it’s just that your size doesn’t allow it.”
Every night, Chen Xing felt his living space being increasingly compressed, waking up from nightmares several times to find a huge crocodile head heavily resting on his chest, and a thick tail on his legs. Thankfully, the bed now was a bit bigger than the one at their previous home, or even if Taotie curled up into a ball, it wouldn’t fit.
All this ended last night when the bed suddenly cracked in the middle of the night. In the morning, Chen Xing woke up to find a thin crack along the edge of the bed.
“You can’t come up anymore, the bed will collapse if you do.”
Taotie expressed its dissatisfaction with mournful groans. Seeing its master lying down to sleep, it couldn’t help but whine, “Whine… awoo.”
The last sound wasn’t quite contained, and Taotie visibly awkward for a moment.
The crocodile’s eyes bulged like bronze bells, its head swayed unconsciously from side to side, and finally, it slowly retracted and lay lifelessly back on the floor.
Only its eyes still clung sentimentally to the outline of its owner, feeling a bit unaccustomed to sleeping on the floor for the first time.
…
After packing up his luggage, Chen Xing set out with a large jar of spicy dried fish and ten vacuum-packed bags of intermediate carnivorous pet food.
Each bag weighed three jin, which was almost enough to satisfy Taotie in one meal.
As Taotie’s size grew larger, its appetite surged. Now, a meal required thirty jin of meat to be full. The school team’s weekly wages were no longer sufficient to cover Taotie’s food expenses, but fortunately, Chen Xing had found an opportunity to sell the Skill Orb and the Skill Forgetting Crystal for six hundred thousand. Now, the money he had was temporarily enough to pay for Taotie’s meals.
Of course, during normal periods, Taotie would convert all the meat it consumed into nutrients for its growth.
In special periods, Taotie could also choose to store the nutrients, so after a meal, it could go a long time without eating or drinking, preserving its strength.
Chen Xing put Taotie into the Beast Taming Space and then took the bus to school.
After finishing the morning classes, classmates headed to the cafeteria for lunch. Chen Xing used to go to the cafeteria only at night, but now he didn’t need to hide any information, so he went with his classmates at noon.
“Brother Chen, how did you raise your beast to be so big?” Gao Jianqiang started a conversation with Chen Xing.
“Because it can eat a lot, the more it eats, the bigger it gets,” Chen Xing chuckled.
“I see! Then I’ll let my beast eat more every day too.”
Not far away, Wang Qiming silently scoffed, thinking that only an idiot like Gao Jianqiang would believe such a statement.
“Then, should we have a competition to see whose beast can eat more?” Chen Xing asked.
“Sure!” Wang Qiming suddenly chimed in, “But my beast definitely can’t eat as much as yours, how about we get a few more people and compare together?”
Chen Xing readily agreed, “Alright, let’s go for ten minutes and see which side can eat more within that time.”
The more, the merrier. He wanted to try accepting the challenge of multiple beasts at once to see if the Proficiency Level increased for one beast or a group of them.
Sometimes, competitions among boys start in the most unfathomable ways.
Like the radiant sunrise, they are passionate, vigorous, bright, and warm.
After yesterday’s neat and tidy victory, Chen Xing had become an idol among the first-year boys, especially those from Class 4 who also raised Salty Bay Crocodiles. A bunch of boys crowded over, raising their hands eagerly to participate.
As for the significance of this impromptu competition, it didn’t really matter, nor did anyone care; as long as they were having fun, that was enough.
The cafeteria aunties and uncles found it amusing and helped out too, by filling a huge iron basin with minced meat.
Then they weighed the meat to act as judges.
Someone shouted start, and Taotie opened its huge, gaping mouth, burying its head into the meat-filled iron basin.
“Go for it!”
“Go for it!”
A group of boys and girls surrounded the scene, raising their arms high.
After ten minutes, the cafeteria uncle managing the time hit the pause. “Okay, time’s up.”
Taotie pulled its head out from the mountain of meat, its nose, eyes, and face covered with sticky minced meat.
It turned its head and looked innocently at its owner.
Chen Xing was amused by the sight, “Let’s go wash your face.”
Crocodiles have very short tongues that can’t stick out of their mouths, which naturally makes it impossible for them to clean the meat off their faces.
Their tongues are tightly attached to the lower jaw, usually sticking close to the bottom of the mouth, which is also related to their evolutionary lack of need for a tongue.
Generally, tongues function for cooling, scent collection, grooming fur, and drinking water.
But for crocodiles, these functions are almost entirely superfluous.
First, crocodiles don’t lack cooling since they stay in the water most of the time and instead need to bask in the sun frequently to warm up; they have many olfactory nerves near their nostrils, and their skin is also very sensitive to vibrations in the water. Moreover, their eyesight is quite good, so they have many ways to sense prey; of course, grooming fur and drinking water are even more unnecessary for crocodiles…
Arriving next to the sink, Chen Xing turned on the faucet, grabbed the hose, and started rinsing Taotie’s face.
While rinsing, Chen Xing sensed that the Stone Booklet was reacting, and a transparent phantom appeared before his eyes.
He opened the Stone Booklet.
“Completed Gluttony Challenge (Multiple), Water Devouring Proficiency +19.”
The word “mastering” behind the Water Devouring skill gradually blurred until it became crystal clear as “proficient.”
Primary Skill: Water Devouring (Proficient) (6/100)